Settling flocculation

An interesting example of a large specific surface which is wholly external in nature is provided by a dispersed aerosol composed of fine particles free of cracks and fissures. As soon as the aerosol settles out, of course, its particles come into contact with one another and form aggregates but if the particles are spherical, more particularly if the material is hard, the particle-to-particle contacts will be very small in area the interparticulate junctions will then be so weak that many of them will become broken apart during mechanical handling, or be prized open by the film of adsorbate during an adsorption experiment. In favourable cases the flocculated specimen may have so open a structure that it behaves, as far as its adsorptive properties are concerned, as a completely non-porous material. Solids of this kind are of importance because of their relevance to standard adsorption isotherms (cf. Section 2.12) which play a fundamental role in procedures for the evaluation of specific surface area and pore size distribution by adsorption methods. 

Starch is a polysaccharide found in many plant species. Com and potatoes are two common sources of industrial starch. The composition of starch varies somewhat in terms of the amount of branching of the polymer chains (11). Its principal use as a flocculant is in the Bayer process for extracting aluminum from bauxite ore. The digestion of bauxite in sodium hydroxide solution produces a suspension of finely divided iron minerals and siUcates, called red mud, in a highly alkaline Hquor. Starch is used to settle the red mud so that relatively pure alumina can be produced from the clarified Hquor. It has been largely replaced by acryHc acid and acrylamide-based (11,12) polymers, although a number of plants stiH add some starch in addition to synthetic polymers to reduce the level of residual suspended soHds in the Hquor. Starch [9005-25-8] can be modified with various reagents to produce semisynthetic polymers. The principal one of these is cationic starch, which is used as a retention aid in paper production as a component of a dual system (13,14) or a microparticle system (15). 

A fourth mechanism is called sweep flocculation. It is used primarily in very low soflds systems such as raw water clarification. Addition of an inorganic salt produces a metal hydroxide precipitate which entrains fine particles of other suspended soflds as it settles. A variation of this mechanism is sometimes employed for suspensions that do not respond to polymeric flocculants. A soHd material such as clay is deUberately added to the suspension and then flocculated with a high molecular weight polymer. The original suspended matter is entrained in the clay floes formed by the bridging mechanism and is removed with the clay. 

Fig. 5. Effect of polymer dosage on different observed properties of flocculated slurry (40). Comparison of five parameters in a flocculation system (8%fluorite suspension + polyacrylamide Cyanamer P250). A, Rate of settling of floe boundary, in cm/s B, height of settled bed, cm C, height of consoHdated filter-cake, cm D, refiltration rate, arbitrary units and E, clarification, % optical transmission of 1 cm of supernatant Hquid after 3 min settling...

In the case of thickeners, the process of compaction of the flocculated material is important. The floes settle to the bottom and gradually coalesce under the weight of the material on top of them. As the bed of flocculated material compacts, water is released. Usually the bed is slowly stirred with a rotating rake to release trapped water. The concentrated slurry, called the underflow, is pumped out the bottom. Compaction can often be promoted by mixing coarse material with the substrate because it creates channels for the upward flow of water as it falls through the bed of flocculated material. The amount of compaction is critical in terms of calculating the size of the thickener needed for a particular operation. The process of compaction has been extensively reviewed in the Hterature (41,42). 

The softened seawater is fed with dry or slaked lime (dolime) to a reactor. After precipitation in the reactor, a flocculating agent is added and the slurry is pumped to a thickener where the precipitate settles. The spent seawater overflows the thickener and is returned to the sea. A portion of the thickener underflow is recirculated to the reactor to seed crystal growth and improve settling and filtering characteristics of the precipitate. The remainder of the thickener underflow is pumped to a countercurrent washing system. In this system the slurry is washed with freshwater to remove the soluble salts. The washed slurry is vacuum-filtered to produce a filter cake that contains about 50% Mg(OH)2. Typical dimensions for equipment used in the seawater process may be found in the Hterature (75). 

The remaining tailings left over from the clay fractionation step is either flocculated with alum, high molecular weight polymers, or a weak (pH 3.0) solution of sulfuric acid, and stored in settling ponds as waste, or may be filtered and sold to the brick industry as a coating material. It also may be dried and sold as a filler in plastics and textured paint (qv). 

Orthokinetic flocculation is induced by the motion of the Hquid obtained, for example, by paddle stirring or any other means that produces shear within the suspension. Orthokinetic flocculation leads to exponential growth which is a function of shear rate and particle concentration. Large-scale one-pass clarifiers used in water installations employ orthokinetic flocculators before introducing the suspension into the settling tank (see Water,... 

Another type of flocculation results from particle—particle collisions caused by differential settlement. This effect is quite pronounced in full-size plants where large rapidly falling particles capture small particles that settle more slowly. 

The design of the sludge-blanket clarifiers used primarily in the water industry is based on the jar test and a simple measurement of the blanket expansion and settling rate (12). Different versions of the jar test exist, but essentially it consists of a bank of stirred beakers used as a series flocculator to optimize the flocculant addition that produces the maximum floc-setfling rate. Visual floc-size evaluation is usually included. 

Probably more relevant to the chemical industry is the scale-up of thickeners. Thickeners are basically gravity settling tanks that, apart from producing a clear overflow, are designed to have a thick underflow with as Htfle water content as possible. The feed into a thickener is generally more concentrated than the feed into a clarifier, and quite often exhibits zone-settling behavior because of the appHcation of flocculants. 

Flocculation is accelerated and higher overflow rates are achieved by external or internal recirculation of settled soflds into the feed which leads to the collection of fine particles by interception. Addition of conditioned fine sand to the feed induces separation by differential sedimentation, and sometimes increases overflow rates to 6—8 m/h. 

Design and operation of recirculation systems can be compHcated. Problems are avoided by using a sludge-blanket clarifier, in which feed enters below a blanket of accumulated and flocculated soflds which become fluidized in the zone-settling regime by the upflowing feed. Feed soflds are trapped in the blanket. The soflds content of the blanket continuously increases and part must be bled off in order to maintain the mass balance. 

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